Toil and Trouble

This may well be the thinnest post we've done since we settled down to be intentional 'bloggers'.  It's going to be thin because we had one of those nose-to-the-limestone and by golly keep-the-momentum-going kind of weeks.  That was supposed to be grindstone, wasn't it.  It fits either way. A grindstone here would be limestone.  There are no other kinds of rocks here, unless they were imported. Apparently it's easier for me to keep typing than it is to go back and change it.  I think this pretty much defines some special kind of laziness that happens from time to time.  Maybe it's a form of tropical inertia.  I could do it, you know.  Go back and change it to grindstone.  If I really wanted to.  I've thought about it.  Obviously.  What's the word for things one procrastinates and never addresses? Pending?

I'd rather just post a sunrise photo.  This one was taken this very morning so it should still smell pretty fresh.  And you may well recognize a recurring theme near and dear to our hearts in the silhouetted  sailboat in a tropical dawn after a  night on the hook'.

I suspect that this boat is awaiting high tide to get into the Caicos Marina and Shipyard.  These are tricky waters for boats in general and for large monohull sailboats specifically.   If you are ever sailing a boat that draws six feet or more through the Turks and Caicos Islands,  you would do well to stay to the published routes.  Don't try the sailboat offroad thing.  Not here.  Look at the charts and see many many square miles labeled "unsurveyed" and "numerous coral heads".    If you do go wandering off the beaten path here, plan to use the maximum light and put a lookout on the bow.

 The forecast today is for winds to be increasing and gusting to over 20 knots. This sailor picked a good spot for the night but we'd be surprised to see them still here come sundown.  That reads like the dialog from a bad western, doesn't it? It's a good temporary anchorage in calm winds and anything from the north, and those conditions don't typically hang around for long here.

We've been working on our boat.  I don't really expect this song to change much, if at all, for the next few weeks.  Working on The Boat is what we do now, for now.  It's become one of those obsessions that's difficult to explain to others. And  difficult to explain even to ourselves sometimes. The amount of work we've put into this boat is thousands of times what I had anticipated when we bought it. And I expected significant work.  Just not for over two years.    This might even qualify for one of those life experience stories.  Some day when it becomes funny in the retelling.  Don't you just wish you could jump to the funny part sometimes?

I think this must have some similarities to the last couple of miles of a marathon  to a long distance runner.  The end is approaching, it's starting to look like it might be within reach.  But it's not guaranteed, not by a long shot.  Nor is the amount of time it took to complete going to be known until after it's done.    I never see photos of those marathon runners smiling at the end.   At least we're still smiling.  Usually.  After 5:00 anyway.  I had to look up grimace just now.  I decided to use smile in that sentence, instead.  But it was close.

I stuck a little camera on the boat a couple days ago, and let it run at five second intervals throughout the afternoon.   I had forgotten I bought one of the Sony versions of a Go-Pro competitor a while back.  Thought I would see if it still works.   We're not in frame much, except for a part where La Gringa had to make a cell phone call to the USA shouting her credit card number into her  phone without anyone else in the marina overhearing it.  This is a brief study in an attempt to use body language to affect technology.  Between noise, the need for privacy and bad connections, she was in cell phone signal contortion.   She didn't realize I had stuck a camera there either.  Obviously.

There are other things going on in there, but you'd have to examine it pretty closely.  Sure looks like while things are fairly steady on our boat, the rest of the world is looking pretty shaky from  here.

I'm not qualified to describe the color green, but I'm told that the vegetation here is starting to show more variety as we move from the driest part of the year into the growing season.  We're getting more rain now, and the foliage is responding.

That's what passes for a small tree here on this hill.  It's easy to see that the wind has been constantly blowing over this plant for all of it's life.  All of the branches but one have turned downwind  as they grew above the protective layer of the surrounding bush.  As soon as the trade winds find them, they start pushing them to the southwest.   And the branch that tried to buck the wind got turned back, and completely doubled over eventually.  And now it's half the length of the branches that went with the flow from the beginning.   But it's been rewarded by the morning sun, and the first drops of rain as well.  Life to windward, perhaps?  Tough, but it has its own rewards.

Dooley the Disinterested and I were walking around the house yesterday looking for one of his lost fetch tennis balls when we were reminded of the effects of the trade winds up here on this hill.  It makes for a constant breeze and it is almost always comfortable, but there are downsides as well.   We, of course, are completely accustomed to what might strike some as an alien landscape. Dooley can find things like chicken bones and tennis balls fairly quickly if he keeps his nose to it and runs that crosswind search pattern that all dogs seem to know.  He develops a rhythm, bopping along with his tail up and his nose down.  Wonder what's going through his hairy little mind.

 
I want to cut one of these branches cleanly enough to count the growth rings, but I don't want to injure a plant.  It takes a long time for things to recover here.  Nutrients and water are in short supply. Sunshine, we got.  I know the wood here is very tough, and brittle.  It looks soft, like you could easily brush past it.  But it's not soft at all.  None of it.  Wandering carelessly through this will produce a number of deep and bleeding scratches to bare legs.  And you would definitely not want to fall down in this stuff.  Think  multiple punctures.   I've just recently failed to relearn this again, apparently.  I was tromping through the underbrush looking for a crashed drone last week. While it was still working.  The drone is no longer still working, but I'm still bleeding.  We try to stay on the edges of the bush.  This is the sort of twisted things that happen to small sprigs when they're exposed to  breaking wind...

We haven't done much tropical fun stuff this week.  Our days have followed a pattern.  We usually hang around the house for the first  couple of hours after dawn. We begrudge the time but have to take care of non-boat related issues, catching up on correspondence, house maintenance, and things like that. By mid-morning we're typically on our way to South Side Marina with a  cooler packed and a plan in mind for the day.  Sometimes the plan even goes according to plan. I'd guess that happens about half the time.  The other half  of the time is full of mostly unpleasant surprises.  I  remember back when surprises were fun. That was before we started refitting a boat.

At the end of the day we often stop by Bob's Bar to see what's going on.  We're not there every night, but maybe two or three times a week.   We typically head straight home when we're tired and it's late and I'm covered with something that most people would find alarming. Some evenings we just want a fresh water washdown before even considering anything else.

I think Thursdays are the quietest nights at Bob's. Thursday is a big Chamber of Commerce style fish fry on the beach  over near the Department of Boat Stuff across the island.  Vendors, activities, loud noises, music. Best night for a quiet drink everywhere else on the island. There tends to be a splash of activity at Bob's just around sundown as people stop by specifically to watch it. It's a good kicking off spot for the evening.   And cruisers rarely stay up late.  We've heard 9 PM referred to as Cruiser Midnight.

A quick look at the   people in this photo reveals  a mix of nine local residents, four cruisers, two vacationers from a resort somewhere, and us.  There were cars pulling up in the parking lot as we departed, though.  If we had done our little head count a few minutes later it would have weighed   much heavier on the tourista side.   And by 8 pm there were probably 40 people here.  Or so we heard.

It's got an ebb and flow all its own, intricately impacted by the interrelated and undulating yearly variables from which the seasons are formed here. Weather is one of the factors, of course, but there are others. School holiday schedules in far off lands. The time of year. Airfares.  Economies. What's happening elsewhere on the island. There's an irregular but generally repeatable pulse to it all. And then there are the regulars here. Up to a dozen or more, including us, for whom this is the neighborhood bar. We can get to this place without ever touching pavement. Could be worse, eh?

This is a view of the underside of the canvas roof over the bar.  The big panels around the edges swing down and lock for storms. Visitors have been writing messages and signing their boat names and dates to the underside of the panels.  It's encouraged.  And as sometimes happens with bars, foreign objects have started making their way into the fabric of the place.  Some of this stuff even came from us  That fellow in the colorful shirt is from Austin.  He was soon playing a drum La Gringa brought home from Morocco. And he's good at it.

So, while this has not been an exciting week by any means, it's been a typical one. We'll spare you three dozen photos of boat DIY.  It's hard enough for me to look at them and I'm living this stuff. I'm tempted to say that I can hardly wait until the day when I look back fondly and remember the time we refitted an old English sailboat in a small island nation. Let's just say we're not anywhere near the looking back fondly part yet.

I can't post this without ANY boat photos.  Not if I call this a weblog and this a typical week.  But I can go easy on you.  I'll take the good, the bad, and the ugly, and just throw out the ugly one for starters.   There's been enough ugly. The bad is really just following up on an identified issue.  I was crawling under the helm console chasing wire gremlins, when one of them suddenly bit me. I was wearing one of my semi sleeveless ragged old t-shirts with holes where seams were once continuous.  You know the ones, tie-dyed by life.  And whilst (yeah, I know, but I don't get many chances to use that word) I wriggled and squirmed my ancient carcass up under the electrified cabinetry, I suddenly felt a quick and jabbing sensation like a wasp on steroids was tattooing the back of my shoulder with a sewing machine. It was very sudden, that 60 cycles per second muscle spasm.   And I didn't just feel it on my shoulder. I was making great electrical contact. I was aware of the places on my arm where I was touching electrical ground, and providing a clear path for this Damoclean threat made real.   I wonder how many years this has lain in wait.

And I was snugged from the waist up inside a cabinet door. Sudden and involuntary forward motion initiated by the electric shock further intensified my rapidly deteriorating situation here. You should have seen what I wrote first time around for that one.  I reworded it.  Cleaned it up a lot. I think I banged my head, elbow, and knee while biting my tongue.  And they say I can't multitask... ha.

I had posted a photo of the offending connection earlier, but I didn't actually take it apart and fix it until it zapped me again, this week.  Maybe that gives you an idea of how things are going. A potentially life threatening electrical contact is second priority.

Anyhow, when I unwrapped it I found exactly what I had expected.  I've seen this handiwork before.

My nemesis was the little bit of bolt connecting the two black wires on the left.  It was exposed through a hole between releasing wraps of the paper painters tape that was used to insulate this marvel of mechanical connections. Some years ago. I wonder what the electrical insulation value half life for masking tape would be. Paper tape in a marine environment.  Don't you just love it. But don't rub a sweaty bare shoulder against it.  Unless you're into that kind of thing, I guess.  It is exciting.  I will say that for it.

And the good, well, that would maybe include a lot of the new types of things we're doing to make the boat more livable.  One recent example is the closet hanging rods. Closets are called 'hanging lockers' on boats.   And the vinyl coated steel tubes that we had to replace were rusted relics of a mistreated past.  We junked them.   And I made some new ones from things that will never rust.
These are Starboard (TM) scraps and PVC plumbing pipe, put together with stainless screws.   I am never going to worry about corrosion with these.  Never.  It's not elegant, but it will work real good and last a long time. And that makes me smile. We'd like to be at the beginning of that long time part for a change, instead of at the aft end.

This is now screwed to the overhead inside the cabinets.  The two long cross pieces are overkill for the closet rod, but they also help support the hull liner. Total  hardware is four stainless screws.

That's it for this post.   We'll cast an eye about for some fun stuff to photograph going forward, but we can't promise a hurricane every week, ya know.

Sunsets, we can manage.

 Mama said there'll be days like this.

There'll be days like this my mama said.

  

Dirty Old Boat Gross-Out Stuff

Well it's finally happened.  I knew that going to a 'post-every-Monday' format would catch up with me sooner or later.  And today it has.   For the past three posts we've managed to fit some funnish type activities into our week.  And we've had some nice tropical photos as a result.   The week before last we managed to get ourselves invited on a sunset sail, and that pretty much saved you from all the DIY stuff last Monday.  Well, today the luck ran out.  This post is going to be about how I spent my week since last Monday.  And it ain't pretty.

Oh we can start with 'pretty'. Sure.  That's easy to do.  Probably a good idea to start you out easy before I get into the ugly stuff later on.  We get some version of this ocean view sunrise scene every morning.   This one was taken just about  three hours ago, in fact:

This past week has been very close to what's become typical for us lately.  That means that basically I spend most of the daylight hours working on our old boat. This has been going on for most of the past year and we've really stepped it up lately.  We've been refinishing the interior of the boat as well as working on all the of the various systems on board.  And it's a lot more of a challenge than we ever anticipated.  In fact I feel pretty safe in saying that if we had known how much work this boat needed back when we bought it, we wouldn't have bought it.

We've been painting the interior using an acrylic enamel paint that seems to be pretty sturdy stuff.    I posted a photo a month ago-the last photo in this post-that didn't really show the color of the new paint very well.   The color of the new paint didn't show up well basically because I was somewhat clueless  about the white balance part of digital photography.  So now I've figured it out, a little.  This is a step/stool I made for one of the engine rooms.  It has white primer on the left and the new interior paint on the right.  NOW you can see the new color.  I hope.

I'm partially color-blind so I'm not the right person to describe  colors to people with normal vision.  I hope this photo is accurate.  I think some of it will depend on how your own display is set up.  It's a buttery cream color.  Very close to the original color.

 We're having to remove a lot of fixtures and bits and pieces as part of this refit.  Sometimes pieces come apart in my hands and I don't always understand why.  This happened with a couple of light switch mounting plates this week for example.  These were two wooden blocks that spaced these light switches out away from the bulkhead (wall) to make space for the wiring.  When I removed them to recover the wall they fell apart.  So I had to make new ones.  First I just copied the ones that broke, using a nice piece of ipe wood that a friend gave to me.  We've been evaluating ipe as a possible material for our new interior work. Just as I finished chiseling out the opening for the light switch, the wood split.  I tried again with red oak salvaged from the old Gilley's restaurant at the old Leeward Marina with the same result.  It split.   This  took the better part of a morning.  I didn't really feel like experimenting further so I used my typical overkill approach and increased the size of the switch plate and changed the material to  plastic.  The original wooden part I was copying is there on the left.  Split.

So two light switch covers cost me half a day.  This is because I just simply cannot buy them. And replacing custom made pieces means another custom made piece, which means I'm the one who has to make it.  At least these Starboard ones should last a while.   I finally figured out that the originals were probably split from the day the screws were first tightened and the pressure of the screws held them together.  They fell apart in my hand as soon as I removed them.  The new plastic ones will be easier to keep clean, and the oval design matches the shape of the companionway doors on the boat.   It's a theme I might just continue with for other decorating doo dads.  And these are not going to split.

We're finding a lot of this kind of thing during the retrofit.  Bad fixes, poor repair workmanship, questionable decisions.   Since this has now pretty much degraded into another Twisted Sheets retrofit post I'm just going to continue onward for the Boat DIY people out there.  And I know you're out there.  I hear from many of you, and very much appreciate it.   For the rest of you, I guess this would be a good time to bail out of this blog post and go find some pretty scenery somewhere.   Because this is about to get ugly.

I'll start out gentle.  The wiring.  Oh, it's not gentle when I get the back of my arm across 110 volts from exposed wiring.  And this has happened dozens of times already on this boat. It just happened again this week.  The previous owner decided he wanted alternating current in one of the cabins.  So he spliced the orange extension cord into the boat's ac electrical circuit like this:

This is  just how I found it, by the way, without a cover plate The connections are crimp lugs that are bolted together, and insulated with brittle, cracking paper masking tape.   I know paper is a decent insulator, until it gets wet.  Personally, I would have done this way differently.  And I will.   But this is only one small example of hundreds.

No kidding.  Look at the condition of the connectors and wiring on the left side of the main helm circuit and control panel:

I have to fix all of this, by the way.  My plan is to buy a nice ac dc circuit board panel, two Yanmar guage/key sets, and redo the whole thing.  Just takes money, and time, patience, and a willingness to learn.   I don't often seem to have all of these ingredients together on the same day.  Oh, here's another factor I wanted to show you electrical types out there.   I was trying to trace some wiring I was removing and I stuck my camera up under a section of the console to see if a photo would tell me what was going on.   This is what the wiring looks like, lying on my back looking upward into the helm console :

Now, consider this.   Every single wire in this area that was supplied as original with the boat was either red, or it was black.  No other wire colors.   Every wire and cable in this photo that is NOT either red or black was added by someone during the 30 year history of the boat.  Some of these are connected at both ends, some at one end, and some not at all.  There is no wiring diagram or manual.  Notice the split wood around the holes drilled in the left side wall there?  ALL of those wires were added by a budding electrician of some kind.   Those splintered holes are not factory installed.  Neither are the gray, green, white, or orange cables. I suspect the same guy who uses masking tape instead of 3M for insulation.

 I can tell I'm losing the rest of you but that's okay.  I'll get back to the pretty photos next week.  THIS is how I really spend 75% of my waking time here, seven days a week.  For those disappointed in this weeks' lack of tropical photos, please check back next Monday.  Meanwhile, back at the boat...

We continue redoing the interior, having stripped the boat back to bare hull inside.  I've come up with my own lights and other hardware for the hanging lockers (closets).  As you can see, I'm really getting into my work here.  Yes, I realize that pun means it might be time for the old Gringo to finally come out of the closet....

It's actually a pleasure working in the newly recovered sections.  The hull liner we chose  is a fairly plush one.  It's the same stuff Airstream uses in their travel trailers, oddly enough.  Its made from polypropylene.  Doesn't absorb water, or odors or stains in most cases.   The down side is the hull prep work.  Oh my.  This is what I've been doing for 8-10  hours per day for three days running.

Not all of the hull gets the liner.  Much of it is getting the new paint.  What started out as a problem for me actually became a convenience.   The problem was when I was cleaning up the painted sections of some lockers for the new paint.  I was hoping that all I would have to do would be clean and rough sand it.  But nope.  Previous owner painted over dirty walls.  And this is in an area that is tight for a big person to work in.  The doorway I'm leaning through here is 24 inches wide. I have to turn my shoulders to get through.  The deck where I have to sit is similar sized.  And the area I am working in is behind those slots where the light is shining out.

Inside you can see what's happened to the old paint.  It was put on over dirty walls. And it didn't stick well.  What appeared to be a smooth surface fell apart when I poked my finger at it.  It was just thin paint that had come away from the bulkhead when it dried and shrank.  You can see the old mold and mildew on the surface behind the loose paint.   I guess it was a temporary solution for someone, but now we're left with the job of making it right.  Or if not right, then at least a whole lot better.   Sometimes in the Land of MakeDo, a whole lot better is the most one can hope for.

And one's arm falls asleep with numbness often when it's draped over the wooden sections to work inside a cupboard.  All the loose paint has to come out.  And the ancient mold then has to be scrubbed off the original fiberglass. After all these years of aging behind a coat of paint, the smell of the mold and mildew hit me  like falling face first into a bin full of old mushrooms.  It's all being scrubbed with a vengeance. Scrapers, wire brushes, and then I'm using tri-sodium phosphate and sanding sponges after the wire brushes, if anyone is curious.  Leaves it ready for painting.  With extreme prejudice.

I'll wager that many of you would consider that a reasonably dirty job. I used to be like that, too.  But not any more.  I now know that cleaning off paint and old musty mushroom smelling fungus is not all that bad compared to some of the things that old boats suffer through.

This would be a good time for me to warn the readers that this has finally gotten down to the ugliest part of this post.  Some would find the rest of this downright disgusting.  I know I did. So, if you don't want to see and think about some disgusting stuff, this would be a good time to bail out here, too.  If you made it this far. Hey, I'm a firm believer in truth-in-advertising, here. Tropical life is not all Corona commercials from the shady hammock, ya know.

I told you much earlier about us removing the holding tank from the boat. This was in a post last year.   We replaced the marine plumbing with composting toilets.  No more holding tank, and hoses.   We pulled all that out.  But there were still traces of that installation in the boat.   All the plumbing for the previous toilet system ran up through this locker.  I am not going to detail the details here, as I think you'll figure out most of it on your own.  Lets just say that La Gringa had upgraded our replacing this old hull liner to being a very high priority.  I pulled the corner of the old liner down this far, and had to stop and go outside and get some fresh air.  I'm going to leave it at that.

The original hull liner color was revealed when I lifted up a tag that had been here since the boat was built in 1985.  Please don't ask me anything about the rest of those stains...

...or the odors revealed when the foam rubber was flexed as I pulled it loose.  The colors here were originally yellow foam, white glue, and buttery cream fiberglass.  Any other colors you can see are subsequent issues. I think my mustache filter was the only thing that saved me. I'm still having nightmares.

And as bad as the upper section of foam rubber was, the lower section was much worse. See why I no longer consider mere paint chips and mildew to be particularly onerous?     Dark is bad.

That blue stripe on the left is a copper strip, grounding the chain plate to the ocean, by the way. Those familiar with the normal color of copper can see that it's oxidized a bit here inside the boat.   Reckon that ever got wet, somehow?  Ah oh. This is what that Holmes fellow might consider a clue.  So, looking directly above it I see the pump out fixture and the holding tank vent.  Oh my. Don't look at this if you've got a weak stomach.

Or at least, if you DO look at it, don't think about it very deeply.  This is a good time to take  shallow superficial thoughts.

This is  looking directly up at the underside of the deck. Hoses were attached to these fittings.  Hoses leak. This would have been a source of numerous leaks and pump out mishaps over the decades.  I told you not to think about it too much!!

Nature's Head should use this photo in their advertising campaigns.   Anyhow, this had to come out of the boat.  No doubt you will be seeing some photos of my new deck plate covering that hole in the weeks to come.

I'll bet you can understand why I needed to take frequent breaks for fresh air during some of this refit.  And I'll also bet you're ready for some fresh air yourself right about now.  SO, here's a photo of Bob's new staircase for a totally abrupt change of subject. We needed one, don't ya think?

We really like the stone work here.  I showed you how they were cutting this into the little limestone cliff in previous posts, and now the railing has been added.   There is a planter there near the top that will be filled with bougainvillea or some similar growing thing. I think some lighting is next on the agenda.

I usually try to close these updates with a sunset photo.  But this new weekly format has kind of caught me unprepared to have fresh ones every Monday.  Back when I was posting about once a month, getting a single useful sunset photo in a month was pretty easy.   That changes when it's only a six day stretch.  Especially when we've been spending more of our evenings on the boat.  Most of our sunsets lately are from  South Side Marina.

We were home early yesterday.  I had just come out of that ugly locker, and as you might imagine I was heading straight for a long hot shower and scrubbing with a bucket of Lava volcanic pumice soap and a long handled wire brush.  Just kidding.  It wasn't made out of wire.  It was some kind of stiff nylon.   Just felt like wire.  I'm finally clean but I scrubbed most of my sun tan away.  Didn't I used to have freckles?

But what this windy closing is all about is that I didn't get a sunset photo this week.  I was all primed and ready yesterday afternoon, but all I got was a rain shower coming my way.

Next week I should be able to show you how nice these lockers look when I'm finished.  Unless something interesting happens in the meantime.   You just never know, in a place like this.